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> It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers us
by V__ 4y ago
> It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.
> The manufacturer worked around the problem by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback.
Does this mean that every machine with a hdd has the same problem? Is it just about finding the right song or do engineers include some kind of dampeners to prevent this?
- dmd 4y agoThere’s a whole chapter in Godel Escher Bach specifically about this! (OK, so it’s supposed to be a metaphor.)
- quickthrower2 4y agoAudiophiles hate this trick
- lupire 4y agoThe weakness is in the specific size and shape of the drive hardware, so the exact resonant frequency would vary a bit.
- porbelm 4y agoBut for the specific production run of hard drives combined with the specific production run of laptop casings etc, with today's manufacturing tolerances, it will be a problem.
- idontwantthis 4y agoDoesn’t that mean hearing the song from another source will still break the hdd ?
- V__ 4y ago> And then they discovered something extremely weird: Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn’t playing the video! Yes
- idontwantthis 4y agoYes I read the article so I was clarifying whether or not they fixed that problem.
- mh- 4y agoSeems like it would have to be vulnerable to it still, right? If their "fix" was to filter audio output. They can't filter everyone's laptops..
- joshspankit 4y agoIn fact, almost everything has this problem. There seems to be (someone more knowledgeable please correct me) no way to avoid having a resonant frequency. The only thing that can be done is to change it. The resonant frequency of a glass can shatter it. The resonant frequency of a room can make it uncomfortable to be in. The resonant frequency of a bridge can tear it apart. We even have to take special precautions between 2.4GHz wifi and processors running at a 2.4GHz clock speed because they are capable of hitting the exact same frequency. As someone pointed out, the difference in manufacturers would have made the resonant frequency slightly differently between the specific drives.
- User23 4y agoA famous example is the old Tacoma Narrows Bridge[1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)
- planede 4y ago> The only thing that can be done is to change it. You can also dampen the resonance, to limit its response at the resonance frequency.
- joshspankit 4y agoYes, but that’s a mitigation technique and not about eliminating the resonance frequency itself.
- Mo3 4y agoThat's just so cool. And probably very annoying for a lot of people.
- waswaswas 4y agoOne example of a precaution taken: Spread-spectrum clocking. Perfectly clocked signals have really high EM spectral peaks (noise radiated at particular frequencies). You can intentionally make the clock a little worse, spreading that radiation over more of the spectrum, and it will reduce the chance that those peaks break other things. https://www.microsemi.com/document-portal/doc_download/135439-white-paper-spread-spectrum-clocking https://www.microsemi.com/document-portal/doc_download/13543...